Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!wuarchive!rex!ames!uhccux!uhunix1.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu!pilger
From: pilger@uhunix1.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Eric Pilger)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.misc
Subject: Re: MS-DOS 3.30A and "SHELL=" in CONFIG.SYS (SLOWness)
Message-ID: <9969@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>
Date: 21 Oct 90 05:54:07 GMT
References: <652@seer.UUCP> <4848@navy22.UUCP> <marshall.656374834@wind55>
Sender: news@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu
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Organization: University of Hawaii
Lines: 26

In article <marshall.656374834@wind55> marshall@wind55.seri.gov (Marshall L. Buhl) writes:
>koch@motcid.UUCP (Clifton Koch) writes:
>
>>>>>Does anyone else think that 160 bytes of environment space is ludicrous?
>>> 
>>  The culprit is usually the environment space, which is defaulted to 127
>>characters.  This is the area that stores the path, prompt, any set 

The culprit is actually, as others have mentioned, the limit imposed
by DOS on the length of a command.  I have a huge environment, but it
doesn't help my path any.  The best solutions semm to remain (as
others have suggested): 1.) shorten your directory names, 2.) use
SUBST, 3.) clench your teeth and hope for the best.

My environment is, in fact, so large that it has revealed yet another
interesting feature in DOS.  Some programs (older versions of Procomm,
a piece of software I am currently beta testing, etc.) will fail with
"Out of Environment Space" if you use more than a certain amount of
environment.  The two instances of this I have discovered failed at
just under 800 bytes.  Doesn't matter how much you give it with
"shell=...", if you use up more than the magic number of bytes,
failure.  Any ideas?

			     Eric Pilger
			     Systems Programmer
			     NASA Infrared Telescope Facility